1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus.
2. Related Art
As an ink jet printer which prints an image or a document onto a recording medium by discharging droplets such as ink, an ink jet printer which uses a piezoelectric element is known. The piezoelectric elements are provided corresponding to each of a plurality of nozzles in a print head and cause a predetermined amount of droplets to be discharged from the nozzles at a predetermined timing. The discharging is caused by driving each of the piezoelectric elements according to a drive signal together with movement along a main scanning direction of the print head and transportation of the recording medium in the sub-scanning direction. In order to appropriately drive the piezoelectric elements which are provided in the print head that reciprocates along the main scanning direction, a configuration is generally adopted in which a drive signal is supplied from a control substrate, which is provided in a housing of the printing apparatus, to the print head via a flexible cable (refer to JP-A-2007-118436). Specifically, a configuration is generally adopted in which the longitudinal direction of a conductor arrangement surface in the flexible cable, that is, the direction in which the conductor extends is matched with a movement direction of the print head, and the flexible cable is disposed such that the conductor arrangement surface and the planar recording medium face one another. According to this configuration, it is possible to realize a printer in which the height of the housing is suppressed.
However, when a configuration is adopted in which, as disclosed in JP-A-2007-118436, the flexible cable is disposed in a printer which performs printing on a large recording medium such as A3 or A2, the operational region of the print head becomes longer in proportion with the size of the recording medium and it is necessary to lengthen the flexible cable to accommodate the lengthening of the operational region. Therefore, the flexible cable flexes and deforms according to the movement of the print head and the weight of the flexible cable, and there is a case in which the flexible cable becomes charged due to sliding against the various components of the printing apparatus in a state of being in contact therewith. When the flexible cable contacts conductive members, such as metal, in a charged state, contact discharging causes noise to be generated and as a result of the noise being superimposed with the signal which is transmitted through the flexible cable, this can become the cause of erroneous operation in the printing apparatus.